Khalid Khan said, “We’d have to do the refining work up there. Arrowheads would be best to begin with. Some lance tips. A few smaller blades.”
“There’s another experiment you might try,” Amerie said, “once you have a strong iron chisel.”
“What’s that, Sister?” asked the turbaned metalsmith.
“Try removing gray torcs with it.”
“By damn!” exclaimed Peopeo Moxmox Burke.
“Iron might short out the linkage between the brains of the torc wearers and the slave-circuitry,” the nun went on. “We must find some way of freeing those people!”
One of Burke’s fighters, a hefty fellow puffing a meerschaum, said, “To be sure. But what about those who don’t wish to be freed? Perhaps you don’t realize, Sister, that a good many humans are quite content in their filthy symbiosis with the exotics. The soldiers, especially. How many of them are sadistic misfits, delighting in the rules given them by the Tanu?”
Madame Guderian said, “It is true, what Uwe Guldenzopf says. And even among those of goodwill, even among the bare-necks, there are many who are happy in bondage. It is because of them that the expiation of my guilt cannot be a simple matter.”
“Now don’t start that again, Madame.” Burke was firm. “Your plan, as it stands, is a good one. With the addition of iron weapons, we can shtup it forward that much faster. By the time we’ve located the Ship’s Grave, we’ll have enough of an armory to give the scheme a reasonable chance of success.”
“I’m not going to wait weeks or months for you people to hatch your plot,” Felice declared. “If my dirk killed one Tanu, it can kill others.” She held out her hand to Burke. “Give it back.”
“They’d get you, Felice,” the Native American said. They’re expecting you. Do you think all of the Tanu are as weak as Epone? She was small fry, fairly powerful as coercers go, but her redact function wasn’t worth much or she’d have smelled you out back at the Castle, even without using the mind-assay machine. The leaders among the Tanu can detect people like you in the same way that they detect Firvulag. You’re going to have to keep out of the way until you get your golden torc.”
She exploded. “And when will that be, dammit?”
Madame said, “When we manage to obtain one for you. Or when the Firvulag choose to give you one.”
The girl replied with a volley of obscenities. Claude went up to her, took her by the shoulders, and sat her down on the soft wood-dust of the floor. “Now that’s enough of that.” Turning to Burke and Madame Guderian, he said, “Both of you have referred to a plan of action that you seem to expect us to participate in. Let’s hear it.”
Madame uttered a deep sigh. “Very well. First, you must know what we are up against. The Tanu seem to be invulnerable, immortal, but they are not. They can be killed by Firvulag brainstorms, the weaker ones, and even a powerful coercer-redactor may be over-whelmed if many Firvulag all project together or if one of their great heroes, such as Pallol or Sharn-Mes, chooses to fight.”
“What is this bad vibes thing?” Richard asked her. “Can you do it?”
She shook her head. “My latent abilities include the far-sensing function in moderation, a somewhat less powerful coercive ability, and an aspect of creativity that may spin certain illusions. I can coerce ordinary humans, and grays who are not under direct compulsion from a Tanu. I cannot coerce humans wearing gold or silver torcs, except with subliminal suggestions, which they may or may not follow. My farsense permits me to eavesdrop upon the so-called declamatory or command mode of the mental speech. I can hear the golds, silvers, and grays when they call out to one another over moderate distances, but I cannot detect more subtle narrow-focus communication unless it is directed at me. On rare occasions I have perceived messages coming from far away.”
“And can you farspeak back?” Claude asked in an excited tone.
“To whom would I speak?” the old woman inquired. “All around us are enemies!”
Amerie exclaimed. “Elizabeth!”
Claude explained. “One of our companions. An operant far-speaker. She was taken south to the capital.” He told what he knew of Elizabeth’s former life and her regained metafunctions. Madame frowned in preoccupation. “So it was she that I heard! But I did not know. And so I suspected a Tanu trick and withdrew at once from the touch.”
“Could you contact her?” Claude asked.
“The Tanu would hear me,” the old woman said, shaking her head. “I seldom project, except to sound the alarm to our people. Rarely to call to our Firvalug allies. I have not the skill to use the narrow focus that is undetectable except to the intended receptor.”
Felice broke in rudely, “The plan! Get on with it!”
Madame pursed her lips and lifted her chin. “Eh bien. Let us continue to speak of the potential vulnerability of the Tanu. They kill one another by decapitation during their ritual combats. In theory a human could accomplish this, too, if it were possible to get close enough. However, the Tanu with coercive or reductive functions defend themselves mentally, while the creators and the psychokinetics are capable of physical assault. The weaker among them remain within the protective sphere of their more powerful fellows or else have bodyguards of armed silver or grays. There are two other ways in which Tanu may meet death, both very rare. The Firvulag told me of a very young Tanu who died by fire. He panicked when burning lamp oil spilled upon him and in fleeing, fell off a wall. His human guardians were unable to reach him before he was incinerated. If they had rescued him before his brain burned, they could have restored him to health in the usual Tanu fashion.”
“Which is?” Amerie asked.
Chief Burke said, “They have a psychoactive substance that they call Skin. It looks like a thin plass membrane. Tanu healers with a certain combination of PK and redact are able to work through this stuff in some metapsychic way. They just wrap the patient up and start cogitating. They get results comparable to our best regeneration-tank therapy back in the Milieu, but with no hardware. Skin works on human beings, too, but it’s worthless without the Tanu operator.”
“Do the Firvulag use Skin?” asked the nun.
Burke shook his huge head. “Just old-fashioned frontier doctoring. But they’re tough little devils.”
Felice laughed. “So are we.”
“The last way that the exotics may die,” Madame resumed, “is by drowning. The Firvulag are excellent swimmers. However, most of the Tanu are rather more sensitive than humans to the injurious effects of immersion. Still, death by drowning is very rare among them and seems to take mostly certain careless sportsmen of Goriah in Brittany, who are accustomed to carry their Hunt to the sea. Sometimes they are swallowed or carried into the depths by the enraged leviathans that they prey upon.”
Felice grunted. “Well, there’s not much chance well be able to hold the bastards’ heads under water. So how do you plan to get the drop on ’em?”
“The plan is complex, involving several phases. It requires the co-operation of the Firvulag, with whom we have a very precarious alliance. Briefly, we would hope to attack and overrun Finiah aided by the forces of the Little People, who would be able to wreak havoc once they penetrated the city walls. Finiah is a strategic target of prime importance and it is isolated from the other Tanu population centers. Within its environs and protected by its defenses is the only barium mine in the Exile world. The element is extracted with great difficulty from a meager ore by rama workers. It is vital to the manufacture of torcs. All torcs. If we eliminate the supply of barium by destroying the mine, the entire socio-economy of the Tanu would be undercut.”
“Kinda long-range for a disaster, isn’t it?” Richard remarked. “I should think they’d have stockpiles of the stuff stashed away.”